June Cleaver Nirvana

Dear Toy Manufacturer that is a 3 letter word that starts with "C" and is not "DOG",

Reid has been your biggest fan since birth. I have been on board until this Christmas. Until recently, your toys have been relatively tough with a decent price. This year Reid spotted your remote control excavator at Target with a price tag in the $60 range. I spotted that it looked like a piece of total plastic crap (the remote wasn't even wireless...which would have made it a very expensive pull toy in my house). Blog-Stedman researched it because it was all Reid could talk about and found that yes, it is a piece of total plastic crap according to parents all over the country. I felt so blessed by Costco when I walked in to their store in November and found the exact same excavator sans the wired remote for $30. I figure if you are going to buy total plastic crap, price matters. I went home victorious with the knowledge that this toy would be out of commission by New Years, but that the money saved would be put into another toy that might make it into 2008.

On faux-Christmas morning (3 days prior to the real thing if you aren't keeping up with my riveting blog), Reid opened the excavator with great joy proclaiming, "I knew Santa was going to bring this!" and I set about the process of removing it from the box. I know parents across the country would gladly join me in a protest march against PWPTTRACSTRT (People Who Package Toys That Require A ChainsSaw To Remove Them), but this was a new one for me: I had to unscrew 8 phillips headed screws to get into the box and when I turned the toy over to remove 4 additional phillips headed screws to release it from a cardboard platform something on the excavator arm broke. Great. It didn't even make it out of the box, let alone until REAL Christmas. On the hellishly annoying bright side, all the very loud sounds and non-melodic music still work perfectly.

It is my plea that next year you produce something that is sturdier then the cardboard box that contains it. Just a suggestion, but maybe you could get your crack PWPTTRACSTRT team on that.

Fervently,
Holly